Mary Ann Evans wanted to escape the stereotype of women’s writing being limited to lighthearted romances. She also wanted to have her fiction judged separately from her widely known work as a translator, editor and critic. Her use of a pen name may also have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny, avoiding the scandal that might have arisen from of her relationship with the marriedGeorge Henry Lewes.

Lewes met writer Mary Ann Evans in 1851 and by 1854 they had decided to live together. Lewes and his wife Agnes Jervis had agreed to have anopen marriage. Jervis had three children with Lewes and four with an unnamed lover . Lewes, having assumed the role of father to all the children, was unable to divorce Jervis but he and Eliot remained together until death.

Eliot was not what society considered beautiful however Henry James…